Loonatics Unleashed (Retro Series Talkback)

powerjake

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The idea of Warner Bros trying to make a serious action show out of Looney Tunes characters is just so ridiculous, It's really just Power Rangers meets Justice League with Looney Tunes characters thrown in. What were they thinking when they made Loonatics?.

Looney Tunes is best known for being a wacky cartoon comedy series and it does not work being revamped as a Dark and Edgy Superhero series.

How does everyone feel when looking back at Loonatics Unleashed?.
 

JMTV

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Trash. Complete trash! I never watch that show and I'm glad that I never will because the mere concept of it is just the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life!

Ya know, talk crap about Baby Looney Tunes all you want, I don't care, at least that show a lot more entertaining than Loonatics ever could...
 

Santana434

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To be fair. I have seen this show on YouTube(back when YouTube used to be good) And let me tell I actually enjoyed it. It’s not the best. Sure the dark and gritty atmosphere was unusual for a looney tunes spinoff since looney tunes was known for its slapstick Humor and comedy. I have to admit I prefer the season 1 for its dark tone and action. While season 2 was ok it wasn’t as good as season 1 . To be fair this show is watchable but not by a whole lot at least it’s better than baby looney tunes.
 

powerjake

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Loonatics Unleashed tries so hard to be a darker, edgier and mature take on of Looney Tunes, but it fails to make it work.
 

JMTV

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To be fair. I have seen this show on YouTube(back when YouTube used to be good) And let me tell I actually enjoyed it. It’s not the best. Sure the dark and gritty atmosphere was unusual for a looney tunes spinoff since looney tunes was known for its slapstick Humor and comedy. I have to admit I prefer the season 1 for its dark tone and action. While season 2 was ok it wasn’t as good as season 1 . To be fair this show is watchable but not by a whole lot at least it’s better than baby looney tunes.

Ok, that's perfectly fine. I just don't really care for it.
 

powerjake

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Loonatics is like some bad grim dark superhero fanfic of Looney Tunes.

Warner Brothers themselves admitted that this show was an embarrassment.
 

wiley207

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Warner Brothers themselves admitted that this show was an embarrassment.

Yep, and it's pretty much the only Looney Tunes TV series that Cartoon Network and Boomerang have outright REFUSED to rerun, at least in North America.
I still remember the day it was announced in February 2005; at first as I was entering my high school (I was in my junior year at the time) and a floor teacher who knew about my interest in cartoons said he heard on the radio on his way in that they were coming out with "an evil gangster version of the Looney Tunes called 'Looney-tics'," and at first I thought he was joking since he's been known to joke around. But then during a study period I went into the media center in my assigned "house" (assigned by color, since the school usually has over 4,000 students enrolled each year) and I saw on that morning's Boston Globe newspaper, "What have they done to Bugs Bunny?!" accompanied by a picture of Buzz Bunny, the early version of whom would become Ace, and I was totally shocked. I knew the Looney Tunes were in danger of fading into obscurity by that time, and that Sander Schwartz had already retooled the famed Warner Bros. Animation studio into what was essentially an Adelaide Productions clone, producing mostly realistic action-adventure/superhero cartoons like those DC Comics shows ("Justice League (Unlimited)," "Static Shock," "Teen Titans," etc.) along with stuff like "The Zeta Project," "Ozzy and Drix," even "What's New Scooby-Doo" was an example of this! I was already angry and upset at WBA for these changes, including retooling Scooby-Doo into a more serious and realistic action-adventure series, but then I declared that they had gone TOO far with "Loonatics," and declared their then-current era to be even worse than the Buddy (1933-35) and Seven Arts (1967-69) eras of the studio!
 

powerjake

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One big problem with Loonatics is how its world is far more realistic and removing the cartoony aspect of Looney Tunes. These characters are the descendants of the classic Looney Tunes characters but they lack the very wacky cartoon physics of the originals.

How did it go from a crazy cartoon Looney Tunes world to a realistic dark world that has nothing in common with the iconic series?.
 

Pooky

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Terrible idea executed just about well enough by some talented people to make it a forgettable mediocrity.
 

AdrenalineRush1996

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I've seen the show on Cartoon Network UK and I didn't really think it was a bad series, though I do understand why it's divisive among longtime Looney Tunes fans.
 

wiley207

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One big problem with Loonatics is how its world is far more realistic and removing the cartoony aspect of Looney Tunes. These characters are the descendants of the classic Looney Tunes characters but they lack the very wacky cartoon physics of the originals.

How did it go from a crazy cartoon Looney Tunes world to a realistic dark world that has nothing in common with the iconic series?.

The same could apply to "What's New Scooby-Doo," as it's a much more realistic series compared to the more cartoony Scooby-Doo shows that came before, feeling very similar to WBA's other action cartoons of the time like "Static Shock," "Ozzy and Drix" and "Justice League." It's stripped of most of the cartoony aspects and physics the prior shows had, and any time they tried something comical (like the running-on-the-spot thing before taking off), if someone other than Shaggy and Scooby were doing it looked too much like if one were attempting it in real life. But a difference is that the show is not very dark, instead being much more light-hearted, especially when compared to the early direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movies the studio did. While the show has had some comic moments, it instead comes off feeling more like a live-action teen sitcom (which makes sense, as The WB was known for airing lots of those at the time.) Rather than be a dark and gritty superhero show, "What's New Scooby-Doo" was more of a down-to-earth slice-of-life kind of series, often feeling more like an ultra-realistic version of "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" with the gang as young adults.
But then there's "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue," which was arguably more similar to "Loonatics Unleashed" than "What's New" was. In THIS case, it dropped the traditional mystery formula and largely focused on Shaggy and Scooby, awkwardly redesigned by Lois M. Lee to look more like stylized caricatures of how Scooby and Shaggy appeared in the 2002-04 live-action theatrical movies, living in Shaggy's rich uncle's mansion and using nano-powered Scooby Snacks to save the world from supervillain Dr. Phineas Phibes and his agents, feeling a lot more like a somewhat serious version of "Kim Possible" or "Inspector Gadget" than a typical Scooby-Doo cartoon. The show was equally as poorly-received as "Loonatics Unleashed" was, and after it was canceled when Kids' WB shut down in 2008, Warner Bros. pretty much swept it under the rug and and admitted it was an embarrassment, and Cartoon Network and Boomerang also outright refused to rerun the show, in North America at least, because we know how back then they would often air LOTS of Scooby-Doo content (though CN began to scale back quite a bit when the "City" era began.) But eventually this show was added to the Boomerang streaming service in fall 2018, so who's to say that someday "Loonatics Unleashed" may make it to the Boomerang service as well? (After all, last spring they added "Yo Yogi!" which was another show CN and Boomerang didn't want to rerun at all in the States.)
 

Pooky

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This NPR discussion from 2005 captures some of the general response at the time.
 

powerjake

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The Loonatics characters have such cringey edgy designs.

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Daikun

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Teen Titans Go is crossing over with Loonatics Unleashed on November 2.

 

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